


Oxidisation

by StormsBreadth



Series: Bleeding Planet [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Magic, Other, if you have any issues with blood at all this is Not the fic for you, in-depth descriptions of blood and gore, incredibly tacky vampire-themed interior decorating, mentions of past juno/cassandra, mentions of past juno/cecil, more worldbuilding than the author intended, murderous mask retelling, past juno made Life Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-24 19:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17709764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormsBreadth/pseuds/StormsBreadth
Summary: Hyperion City is ruled by a gang of bloodsuckers, in a sense that’s more literal than not. Juno Steel is a private detective with a knack for dealing with the bullshit that tends to surround vampires. Rex Glass is ... an enigma, and the Croesus Kanagawa case is more complex than it initially seems...Created for the Penumbra Minibang 2019! Detailed content warnings in author's notes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally here! This fic kind of got away from me a bit and I wound up splitting it into two fics so uh... keep your eyes peeled folks. Huge thank you to everyone involved in the penumbra minibang, especially the mods and my artists!! The art for this fic is for a later chapter so will be showing up then, but for now you should all go shower @d4yngel and @faunlord with love on tumblr anyway because they are fantastic!
> 
> full content warnings (SPOILERS FOR THE FIC): spider-like camera creatures which are full of, and fuelled by, blood appear several times. Characters intentionally cause themselves to bleed for various reasons relating to vampirism and blood magic. A character's cybernetic arm is removed. Mind control and other forms of agency loss are discussed. Characters are depicted with a significant lack of regard for human life. Blood features heavily in many different contexts. Needles are mentioned very vaguely and briefly. Juno Steel has canon-typical levels of disregard for his own wellbeing. While this fic contains some intense and sexualised language, there are no sex scenes.

In a city like Hyperion, you didn’t reach the top without spilling a little blood. Or, more likely, a lot of blood, and no small amount of it your own. The result of this being, of course, that anyone who managed to stake a claim on some portion of the city’s power really weren’t keen on letting that power go. 

The principle of dead man’s shoes took on a whole new meaning when most people in the hierarchy were already dead. 

Which was why Juno Steel was hardly surprised to learn that Croesus Kanagawa had passed away for the second time, not peacefully in his sleep, but in mysterious circumstances the end result of which was that the former crime boss was now a pile of dust decorating his own gallery floor. Well, better than a human murder at least. Didn't leave a stain for one thing: bodies couldn't be cleared away with a vacuum cleaner, and there was no blood to be seen.

Well, no blood by the body at least. Juno was choosing not to look at the blood elsewhere in the room, and instead focused on the floating, disapproving face of Sasha Wire.

'So a vampire gets dusted, the police are stuck, what else is new? Give it two days and some other bloodsucker's going to step into his shoes, smile at the right people for a while, everyone will politely pretend they didn't do it and we'll all be back to our regularly scheduled vampire programming. Who knows, with Croesus gone the programming might even start verging on good.'

Sasha continued to look unimpressed. Fifteen years since Juno had seen her last and she’d barely changed, except that her frown had deepened and the shades she was wearing were bigger and darker. Juno thought they might be hiding shadows under her eyes, but who could say. Maybe Dark Matters made you sleep easy, knowing you were just that much better than everyone else.

'This is serious Juno. Hyperion City hangs in a unique political balance, and any disruptions to the system have the potential for serious ramifications.'

'God, really? You know, I wonder what they do on planets where most of the ruling elite aren't immortal, must be really confusing, all those changes every twenty years or so. Or, hell, if you think about  _ democracies- _

‘Okay Juno,’ Sasha cut him off. ‘Even if you can’t bring yourself to care about politics, I suggest you take a close look at the pretty pattern someone drew  _ in blood _ on the wall and think about why it might be of concern to someone who’s had the unfortunate experience of seeing you naked.’

The blood that Juno had been studiously avoiding looking at. He glanced over at it reluctantly, then squinted as he realised just why the lines looked so familiar. Rather than being a series of random scrawlings, it looked to be a deliberate shape. Still random and abstract, but its resemblance to the scar that had crossed Juno’s chest since he was a child was uncanny. 

‘Alright,’ he said after a moment. ‘Colour me interested. I’ve been looking for a nice, low stakes case.’

It wasn’t quite that simple. Things never were, which was how he found himself half way out of the window but still face to face with with the Dark Matters agent whose company had apparently been a mandatory condition of him getting the case. 

Juno looked him up and down, instantly on edge and distrustful of what Shasha had described as a ‘vampire expert’. He didn’t have the hungry look in his eye that characterised most vampire spawn at least, the desperation both for warm blood and the approval of their progenitors. He stood up straight, faintly amused and completely in control of himself and - judging by Rita’s gooey eyes and and the fact that Juno was still only  _ half _ out the window - the situation as well. 

Plus he was skinny, which was frankly a stereotype but in Juno’s line of work you learnt to recognise patterns. If it looked like a vampire and talked like a vampire, there was a higher than average chance that it  _ was _ a vampire and that was probably something worth checking out. Glass, however, didn’t: most spawn looked more like hired thugs than . . . whatever Glass looked like. Tall and confident, mostly, well suited to the already flattering cut of the Dark Matters Uniform. 

So probably not vampire spawn, which left the options of human and full on vampire, and Juno couldn’t quite make out which. He was pale, sure, but no paler than the usual range of human skin tone allowed, suggesting either he was perfectly well fed already or just didn't get out in the sun too often. His eyes, when Juno looked at them, were green, as opposed to the red or ‘definitely not red, just chestnut brown and not about to start glowing’ of most vampires. 

And then he smiled. 

It was a good smile, all things considered. Relaxed, self-assured, the sort of smile that you might find on the brochure for a modern business course at Hyperion Dome University, were it not for the subtle hint of threat, and the impression that much of the relaxed and self-assured demeanour came from the certain knowledge that he could break anyone who challenged him in half. And of course, the teeth. Juno's eyes honed in on them immediately. The man's canines were pointier than human teeth had any right to be.

As if he had noticed Juno’s gaze, Glass moderated his smile into something slightly less toothy, and he inclined his head. ‘Shall we, detective?’ he asked. Sighing, Juno picked up his things and climbed back in the window, accepting the presence of the agent for the time being. 

 

\-----

 

The Kanagawa Mansion was in a slow and stable orbit around the planet, tethered into place by a great steel cable that ran up past the edges of the Hyperion Dome and into the Martian stratosphere. A doughnut-shaped elevator wrapped around the cable, bringing up any guests and visitors who weren’t quite lucky enough to have their own private shuttles. The whole thing was set in a garden with an immaculate lawn, ringed by an electrified fence with a metal gate containing more twirls than an entire  _ corps de ballet _ dancing the last scene of  _ The Nebula Princess _ . 

It was ostentatious as fuck, so naturally was surrounded by protestors more or less constantly. There weren’t too many when Juno pulled up to the gate with Rex, just a handful of people waiting around with battered signs covered in slogans like ‘Hyperion for Humanity!’ and ‘Stay dead!’. Juno resisted the urge to look too hard at their faces: doing that mostly just meant that you noticed when they disappeared. 

‘So tell me Juno,’ Glass asked, as they got out of the car and made their way over to the gates. ‘What should I expect?’

‘What, you mean you didn’t get a neat little envelope containing everything you need to know about everyone on this planet?’ Juno wasn’t really focusing on Glass, paying more attention to poking the button with a stick he found on the ground. Less likely to attempt to collect DNA samples that way.

‘Oh, naturally. But sometimes it’s better to hear the word on the street, as it were. What do  _ you _ think I should know about the family?’

Juno sighed, squinting up at the little red light on top of the gate that indicated they were not going to be allowed in. Reluctantly, he stuck a finger onto the button and winced as something stabbed the tip of it. The gate box beeped.

‘They’re one of the biggest crime families on Mars and they have been for the past couple of centuries. They got rich off of who knows what, and then got famous by figuring out how to capture vampires on film and using this to broadcast themselves across every streamer on the planet. Croesus went mad a couple of decades back but the family empire’s still going, it’s run by people who are smarter than they look, meaner than you expect an ruthless when it comes to getting a good cut and -’ he finished just as the light on top of the gate switched from red to white. 'They've probably already looked you up, scanned your files and pulled out anything that looks like it make for good reality television.'

As if on cue, an automated voice said 'Welcome back, Juno Steel.'

‘See.’  


'Very impressive, I'll admit, detective, though you did say that you've been here before. Facial recognition software can't be all that difficult to come across here.

The doors to the elevator slid open. It was comparatively non-threatening, certainly compared to the last time that Juno had crawled into it, though admittedly he'd been somewhat hazy from blood loss at the time. Whoever had redecorated it last had installed a nice, wipe-clean cream couch into the tiny space, along with a large camera in front of them. Juno chose to remain standing, and Rex did the same, lounging against the door and looking at Juno, who shook his head.

‘It’s not facial recognition. They’ve got a theme and they’re sticking to it, you’re gonna get blood samples taken at every opportunity they get.’ 

The camera in the corner had swivelled to look over in their direction as they entered. Juno kept an eye on it as Rex spoke. It had an unusual number of robotic protrusions coming out of the body, and they were starting to stir. 

‘Delightful. Perhaps I should have eaten a steak before coming. Or some green leafy vegetables, it wouldn’t do to pass out in the middle of an investigation now would it.’

The shutter on the camera was blinking slowly, the mechanical clack of the two halves coming together sending a jarring feeling down the back of Juno’s skull. As it shifted slowly over to the door Juno and Glass were lurking in, shifted closer to Glass, enough that he could feel the man’s presence in the shift of his own clothing.

‘I dunno,’ he said, nudging Glass gently and nodding over at the camera. ‘I’d say they’ve had worse than a spot of light fainting.’ 

Glass followed Juno’s gaze. The camera was now well on its way across the room, the wires and plates that dangled out of its blocky form twitching. Whether it was the result of electric surges or something more purposeful Juno couldn’t say, and didn’t want to find out. Next to him, Glass’s stature shifted slightly, so that he was no longer lounging so much as getting ready to jump. 

It wasn’t a moment too soon. The camera lunged forward, making a metallic screeching noise as it did. Juno and Glass split apart and the thing’s momentum knocked it into the elevator door. The knock was a trivial one, however, and it immediately righted itself turning to face Juno who immediately, and instinctively, punched it in the lens. 

The camera glass shattered, lacerating Juno’s knuckles with a dozen tiny cuts. Juno swore, flicking his hand instinctively to try and deal with the pain, sending tiny ruby droplets scattering through the air. The camera reared back but righted itself, its head spinning wildly, only to have Glass grab a handful of its wires and cut them with a small knife that he’d pulled out some time that Juno wasn’t looking. 

Blood poured from the ends of the severed wires, as the camera-blood-creature-thing started jerking, its wire-veins twitching, spraying blood across the room. Juno felt nauseous just looking at it, but he didn’t let that stop him from shoulder barging the creature down to the ground and stamping on its support struts. 

There was a lot of blood. Juno took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling for a few seconds and trying not to think too hard about the dark, viscous substance leaving from the creature, instead thinking about things like ‘breathing’ and ‘not fainting’. 

Glass, meanwhile, had knelt down and inserted a knife into the gap between a couple of the plates that formed its outer shell, and used the leverage to prise it up. Curiosity winning over revulsion, Juno knelt down next to him. 

The first thing that he noticed was the design that someone had drawn in blood around the inside of the plate. It was dried on, close to flaking off, dark and crusty, but still clearly put there with intent. Not least because this close, the lines bore a clear resemblance to the design scrawled across the wall near where Croesus died. And Juno’s chest, of course. 

The second thing that Juno noticed was the vial of still fresh looking blood that was sitting in the centre of the cavity, in amongst the wires and plates that made up a normal camera's insides. That was the point at which he decided that this  _ wasn't  _ something he needed to deal with and looked away.

Glass had other ideas. 

'Have you looked at this Juno? It's fascinating, I've not seen anyone use blood magic like this before. I've used it to manipulate life force, of course that's what blood magic is, but to use it as an animating force -'

'Yeah, I'm real interested in the innards of the thing that just tried to kill us Glass, have you made sure that it's actually dead or do we need to stamp on it some more.'

'Oh, don't worry about that!' Rex stood up, smiling brightly at Juno in a way that served to highlight his canines quiet effectively. The fact that he was holding up a bottle of blood really did nothing but emphasise the fact. 'I've pulled out the phylactery, it should be perfectly inert now.'

'Good to know. Hopefully they won't sue us for destruction of property.'

‘Oh, this is more than property detective. This is  _ magic _ .’ He tapped the glass of the bottle a couple of times with the end of his perfectly manicured nail. It made a clinking noise. ‘Now I’m not expert on this  _ particular _ application of blood magic, but I would guess that it’s some kind of soul binding.’ 

‘Some kind of what now?’ 

Glass smiled brightly. His teeth were sharp enough to making it look just a little unsettling, and Juno tried to pretend that unsettling was  _ all _ that the teeth made him look. ‘Soul binding, it’s a technique used to bind, oh, say the “essence” of a person to a place or thing. Most accounts of it being used are apocryphal though - we know you can  _ access _ a soul through the blood, and of course it’s what makes vampires stick around for so long, but to do that to a machine…’

Juno felt slightly sick. 

‘You mean that’s a person in there?’

‘Well, more like part of a person but. Yes. Are you quite alright, detective?’

The elevator dinged, letting them know they’d finally reached the orbital mansion. Juno barely had time to get out a choked ‘Yeah I’ll be fine’ before the doors opened into the reception room. It was pretty much what you’d expect. Sad-looking pot plant, metal detector, blood sample collection point -

‘Seriously?’ he asked the burly guard standing on the other side of the array. ‘Blood samples to get in here? Was the haemoglobin sample you got at the gate not enough for you? You’ve got my blood on file already, and even if you didn’t I’m pretty sure that Cecil’s got the damn taste of it memorised from the number of comments he’s made over the years.’

‘Blood samples are mandatory, I’m afraid,’ opening her mouth in something that was less a smile and more a way to bare her fangs. The Kanagawas were many things, but subtle was not one of them, and this woman had a mouth full of daggers and the kind of muscles you only got from long hours at the gym working on making your physique look threatening. ‘It’s a separate system to our gate key, and we need them to match your personality type to our shows.’

'We're here to solve your sire's murder not star in any of your crappy TV shows, if you think we're-'

'Now now, detective,' Glass interrupted, causing Juno to suck in an outraged breath. 'Our hosts have been very gracious so far, perhaps it's better just to humour them so we can get on with fulfilling our purpose in being here.'

Juno opened his mouth to argue, and then shut it again. 'Fine,' he said, and stepped into the archway.

Blue lights flashed over him as the metal detector ran a scan, and the blood sample collector stabbed him in the finger with what felt like a little more vehemence than normal. He could just about see the screen that the security woman was looking at, flashing up an A+ for his blood type, followed by a chemical breakdown of most of his emotions.He looked away, deciding that there were some things he’d rather not read about on a screen in the Kanagawa mansion.

'Our sensors have detected a significant amount of metal on your person, we’d appreciate it if you would kindly remove it all for inspection.’

‘It’s equipment,’ Juno snapped. ‘Look, do you really want to know about my nipple piercings, or can we get on with what my -’ he paused a second, trying to work out exactly what Glass’s relationship with him was ‘-colleague said and do our god damned job?’ 

Behind him, the colleague in question was smiling pleasantly at the security guard as he stepped through the scanner. O- flashed up on the screen behind him. The security guard smiled back, only a hint of strain around her eyes. 

'Of course, come on through, Detective Steel and...'

'Special Agent Rex Glass, pleased to meet you.'

She didn't bother to respond, instead leading them through the maze that formed the Kanagawa mansion. Juno kept his hackles firmly raised as they travelled, scanning the walls and corridors for any sign of approaching cameras. This was partly in response to the friend they’d made earlier in the elevator, but it was partly just a general precaution: you could never be too sure in the Kanagawa mansion.

Glass also appeared to have his hackles up, though his eyes were not around the room, but on the all-but faceless people who had surrounded them. All but faceless, big, muscly, and with the strange desaturated look to them that usually indicated a vampire of some description.

‘My,’ he said, ‘That’s a lot of… muscle.’

The way he spoke suggested that muscle was not the word Glass had meant to pick. Juno, having no such qualms about the possibility of offending the Kanagawas, shrugged.

'Yeah, they like to keep their retainers hungry and loyal, and there's no better way to do that than to stick them with a psychic bond and make them utterly dependent on you for their next meal.'

'There are rather a lot of them. They must get through a lot of blood like that.'

‘No kidding,’ Juno said, looking up over at the impassive face of the latest woman to appear at their side. The same woman as showed them through security, he was pretty sure. ‘Though there's not as many around as you think. They have a tendency to move faster than human eyes can see is all, but they still like to keep a few on retainer. Why the hell do you think there are so many protests going on down there?’

‘Oh, I don't know, general discontentment. A principled gesture, perhaps. A lack of anything better to do.’

'Yeah, no, welcome to Hyperion. We have real problems here.'

They made it to the end of the corridor, into Croesus’s gallery. Juno heard a soft gasp beside him and turned to see Glass, already skirting close to the walls and looking up at the various artifacts and paintings that Croesus had used to decorate the gallery. The Kanagawas were an important vampire family, and they weren't going to let anyone forget that: the room was full of memorabilia and artifacts, from the possessions of bloodsuckers past to legendary vampire killing weapons, because apparently Croesus had wished for a poetically ironic death long before it actually happened to him.

The centre of it all was a mausoleum, which housed Croesus’s prized possessions. 

‘Pretty neat, huh.’ 

Juno started and whirled around to see Cassandra Kanagawa leaning against the wall, her arms folded and her expression dark, eyes glimmering an ominous red. 

‘Sure, it looks like someone kept the place pretty tidy.’ Juno glanced over to where Glass was flitting around the room, gasping at the various artifacts on display. ‘What’s up Cassandra?’

‘Oh you know, same old same old. Dad’s dead, keep the camera’s rolling, with any luck we can get a six-hour stream special outta this one. I figured you’d be along soon enough to poke your nose in.’

‘And here I am, right on cue would you look at that. About to poke my nose in on the scene of the crime itself.’

‘Yeah, well, good luck with that. Dad was as paranoid as he was crazy, but also, I don’t know, maybe some kind of genius. He set the security up so that it gets a read on your fucking soul before you can enter, it’s only set up for me, him and Cecil.’ She paused, frowned. ‘Well, me and Cecil now.’

Juno looked at her. ‘Huh. Care to let us in then?’

Cass fixed him with a withering stare.

‘It’s what I’m here for.’

Juno went to retrieve Glass from the other side of the room, where he was cooing over some sort of crusty looking goblet. Juno wasn’t paying that much attention to what Cass was doing - likely something horrific- but there was a flash of sickly red light, and the doors ground open. 

It was slightly ironic: if the stories (and, honestly, the pictures on Croesus’s own wall) were to believed, this would probably have made a good bedroom for one of the undead. It was kind of cosy, if you liked your comfy areas with a side of death and creepiness. Juno looked around. Someone had, helpfully, put a little glass box over Croesus's ashes, leaving them undisturbed by the foot traffic that came through the room. Everything else was left more or less as it had been at the point of his death. Big bloody symbol on the wall included. Juno took a few moments to stare at that, before deciding that it was a problem for later.

The object that had got Croesus in the end was on the floor, as though it had been dropped. The Light of Mars. Not the most imaginative name, to be sure, but a pretty descriptive one. It was a tiny pyramid most of the time, and lay in the shape on the floor. It had the same shape - and similar inscriptions - to the ones that dotted the planet’s surface, last remnants of the ancient race that had crawled the sands before. When the top was pressed in, however, it opened up to reveal a brilliant light.

A brilliant light that, as an unfortunate lesser member of the Kanagawa family had found on the thing’s discovery discovery, had at least  _ some _ of the same properties as the sun. Notably, the property of reducing vampires to ashes. Given the pile of dust that had once been Croesus Kanagawa, it was pretty easy guess what had happened.

Once again, Juno was torn between gratefulness at the lack of a cadaver to examine, and frustration that the  _ lack of a cadaver to examine _ meant pretty much everything about the case would be guesswork. 

Juno bent down to examine the dust anyway. It was a pretty neat pile, suggesting that he’d been standing still at the time. It would probably have been ruled some kind of tragic accident, were it not for the mysterious smears of blood all over the wall. 

‘Did you know that there’s actually a lot of debate as to whether or not martians had vampires?’ Rex asked from behind him, making Juno jump. 

‘Really?’ he asked, voice as sceptical as he felt. ‘Wasn’t Mars kind of an irradiated wasteland back then? You know the only reasons vampires can survive here is because the domes filter out all the UV rays.’

‘True, dear detective, but you’re forgetting something: the ancient martians lived underground for most of their lives. Why else would they need to trap the light of the sun into a pyramid?’ Glass nodded at the Light. ‘Speaking of which, do you mind?’ 

‘Go right ahead.’

Glass reached over and picked the pyramid up, holding it up to the light and letting out a soft little ‘Fascinating.’ 

Cass didn’t look too impressed. ‘Yeah, whatever your experiment is I’d appreciate you  _ not _ opening that thing in here, some of us are a little sensitive to the stuff inside it.’

'Oh but of course!' Glass smiled widely at her. 'I'll just take it outside.'

Glass carried the pyramid to the doors, exclaiming as he did about the delicate workmanship and how extraordinary it was to see so complete a specimen. Juno watched him go, listening out to confirm that the door was shut and Cass wasn't in imminent danger if he did decide to open the thing, but then turned back round to Cassandra.

She wasn't hugely happy about being interrogated, particularly once she figured out that it was an interrogation, and Juno couldn't blame her. Even laying aside the trauma that generally accompanied losing a parent - and Juno broadly was putting it aside, there wasn't much lost love between Croesus and Cassandra - being the subject of a murder investigation was hardly a fun experience. Particularly when the person doing the interrogation was someone you considered a friend.

'Look, would you get off my back? I wasn't even in the freaking house last night, I was out.'

'That's real nice Cassie. You got any evidence of that, any CCTV footage or something?'

Cass fixed him with a withering stare. 'Like hell I do, Juno, you know as well as anyone else that we don't show up in cameras.'

'Yeah, well, I've got a few hundred million viewers that beg to disagree with that statement. Your whole family's plastered up on billboards and the streams pretty much 24/7, and I know that if there's anything in your personal lives that you think you're even vaguely likely to be able to sell you'll film it.' He nodded in the direction of the camera that had distended itself from the wall over the course of their conversation. 'The old "vampires don't show up on film" line isn't going to save you here Cass.'

Cass scowled furiously, and swatted at the camera hard enough that it crashed into a wall, making a noise that sounded like a whine before retracting back into the wall from which it had appeared. A shutter slid over the hole, blending in almost perfectly with the stone walls around it.

‘Alright, fine,' she said. 'I do show up in films. Some of them. But I smashed them out of the car I was in and cut the wires on a bunch of them. Because maybe sometimes I want to do things that aren't filmed by my family.’

'Sounding real innocent there Cass, gotta say. Honestly, couldn't imagine how anyone would ever suspect you of anything.'

‘God, you are so  _ frustrating  _ \- look, what if I could prove it to you, what if I could show you I was telling you the truth.' There was a wild look in Cassandra's eyes, a wild look that was suddenly accompanied by the presence of a knife in her hand. Juno moved instinctively to grab his blaster, but it was quickly clear that she wasn't threatening him. The knife was held against her own palm rather than waving in his general

He reached out a hand towards her slowly instead, but she didn't do anything in response - didn't drop the knife or brandish it, or press it into her palm, she just stared hard at Juno.

'I'll make an oath, bound in blood. That way you'll know I can't be lying to you.'

Juno glanced between her hand and her face, suddenly getting the very acute sense of being out of his depth that accompanied most interactions with the city's undead population. Still, even if she wasn't asking him to do something he could do, he could still make a pretty decent guess at what she was asking exactly.

'Oh yeah, sure, let's do that, what's a little blood magic between friends after all. Even completely leaving aside the fact that some of us run on our own haemoglobin and don't really have access to that kind of power.'

The sound of someone clearing their throat behind him made Juno turn around. Glass had poked his head back through the door that led out of the mausoleum, his dark sunglasses pushed up to balance on the top of his head and the Light still held carefully out of the way.

'If I may, Detective,' he said. Juno folded his arms as Glass sidled fully into the room. 'It's perfectly possible for a human to learn about blood magic, and scientists on Euridice Minor have even developed limited ways in which a human might participate in such an event - only under certain circumstances, of course. But either way it doesn't matter, because what Miss Kanagawa here is proposing requires only the one forging the oath to have the power: the recipient of the oath - indeed, even the oathmaker - need not be one of the kindred.'

Kindred. Juno had to roll his eyes - it was an old fashioned term, and a euphemistic one at that. Most people nowadays just called them bloodsuckers, or leeches. Or vampires if they were being polite. Then again, Glass was supposed to be an expert in this sort of thing, maybe spending a lot of time writing long books written about how great vampires are did that to you.

'Okay, sure, it's possible for me to have Cass make some kind of creepy promise not to tell lies to me. How the hell am I supposed to know that it's not all a load of bunk?' Juno caught the sound of Cassandra drawing in a breath next to him and glanced over at her. 'Sorry Cass. Hard evidence and all.'

The fight seemed to have gone out of her a little though. 'Whatever,' she said in response, while Rex smiled at Juno in a way that did a lot to show off his slightly too sharp teeth.

‘Ordinarily, perhaps - you haven’t exactly studied the rites of the kindred in depth and would have no way of knowing whether what you say was, indeed, a load of bunk. Fortunately, you happen to have an expert on the matter at hand, and someone who can ensure that the correct sigils and sacrifices are made in order to ensure Miss Kanagawa's full forthrightness.'

Cass didn't look too happy about his proposal, and Juno wasn't entirely convinced either. Glass rolled his eyes, and pulled out his comms unit, skimming through it until he found what looked to be several long documents on the nature of blood sigils. 

'See, detective. Magic is only another form of science, after all, and science requires evidence, and procedure.' He turned to smile at Juno again, glasses now back on his face for what Juno suspected was the sole purpose of looking at him over them. 'Much like detective work, I'm sure.’

'Fine,' Juno replied. 'You verify, we take lots of pictures, Cass promises us she's telling the truth.

It was probably a good thing that Glass was there to communicate exactly what was going on. When Cassandra slit her hand open, Juno immediately had to look away, leaving only the sound of her running her fingers in lines along the floor and her arm, and swearing to be bound in her soul itself to tell he truth and only the truth in the eyes of her makers. 

Juno opened his eyes when Rex nudged him. Cass was standing there with lines drawn up her arm in her own blood, the palm with the cut in it stretched out towards Juno.

'You're supposed to take her hand, detective,' Rex said. 'Ideally with some of your own blood.’

'Yeah I'm reasonably certain that bleeding together is how vampires get made and I have no particular desire to join the legions of the damned right now.'

Rex only laughed at that, which did nothing to allay Juno's concerns. 'Suit yourself,' he said instead. 'It should work just fine even if you don't bleed for it.'

Still wary of what was about to happen, Juno reached out and place a hand on top of Cassandra's, looking her in the eye as she swore to tell him the truth or so perish in the fires of eternal torment. As she did, Juno felt a strange sensation run up his arm - like heat but without any warmth to it. The kind of sensation that follows a glass of cheap champagne, a slightly acidic feeling that burns on the way down and leaves you just a little lightheaded and already regretting what you're about to do.

'I didn't do it,' Cass said, and something about the words rang true in a way that they hadn't before. A certainty settled in Juno’s chest with the weight of a foundation stone, telling him that she was telling the truth. 

He glanced over at Rex, who had a little smile on his face as he observed the proceedings. Seemed to have worked then.

'Okay, great,' Juno said to her. 'Whatever the hell that was seems to have worked because I'm now convinced you can do no wrong which is either because you haven't or because you've pulled a really neat trick.'

'You're so suspicious, what more do you think I can do? I've told you I'm innocent, why won't you damn well believe me?'

'I'm a suspicious person, it's at least partly why I'm alive. I'm on the suspect list, so's Agent Glass. So's your brother, any idea what he was up to last night?'

It was a cheap move. Juno knew that even as he said the words, but then again, a suspect who was sworn to truth was a gift horse he didn't intend to look in the mouth.

'I don't know.' Cass replied, folded her arms, and huffed. 'What do you think I am, his keeper? We've got camera crews hired to do that. Probably in the crypt, working on research for his stupid new show idea.' Her voice was tight, as though she was trying hard not to display some emotion and only mostly succeeding. 

‘Stupid new show idea? You sound pretty resentful there, Cass.’ 

She glowered at him. 

'Yes,' she said, followed by 'Fuck, no!' There was a tug in Juno's chest: confirmation, if he needed any more than her face, that she was lying. She groaned. 'And fuck you for asking me that while I've sworn no to lie to you.'

'Yeah, sorry about that. You gonna tell me what’s going on or?'

The story she told his was pretty much what he'd been expecting: the dream of travelling the universe, camera in hand, seeing all its wonders and sharing them with the rest of the world. It was a good idea. Cute. And apparently she'd convinced her father of that.

'You get the promise in writing?'

She shook her head.

'So Cecil's been going ahead with his awful blood chamber plan and you've been left with nothing but a vacant promise that can't be cashed in now that the man who made it is dust, that about -'

Juno didn't get to finish the sentence as the rest of the air was knocked out of his lungs by the punch that Cass landed on his stomach. It would have been painful coming from anyone, but Cass’s supernatural strength put a lot more force behind it and Juno was knocked right off his feet.

‘Pretty much,’ she said, stepping forward to look over him. 'And fuck you Steel.'

‘I thought we were never going to talk about that again,’ Juno said. Still on his arse in the middle of the mausoleum, but he’d said stupider things from worse places. 

'Shut the fuck up before I break all the bones in your body, Juno.' She turned to stomp away, so Juno scrabbled to get upright, assisted by Glass putting a pair of surprisingly strong hands around his arm and pulling him up.

'Shutting right up, but would you mind telling us where we could find Cecil before you run off to wherever it is you're going?'

Cass sighed, clenching then unclenching her fists at the threshold to the mausoleum. Eventually she looked back.

'The crypt. Have fun down there.'

With that, she stalked off. Juno readjusted his coat and Rex stepped smartly away from him as he did, leaving Juno with a faint sense of loss.

'Quite a character,' Rex remarked.

'Yeah, makes for better marketing,' Juno replied. 'Come on, let's find Cecil.'

  



	2. Chapter 2

_ _

_ [id: Art of Juno and Rex Glass walking through candlelit catacombs. They look behind them as they pass a stone fountain of a cherub holding a vase—Juno’s expression is apprehensive while Glass smirks knowingly. The cherub’s eyes resemble the aperture and lens of a camera, and the liquid pouring from the vase is deep red. A large stone statue of an angel looms in the background and above them, arms extended and palms up. End id] (art by [@d4yngel](https://d4yngel.tumblr.com/))  
_

 

The idea that vampires lived in crypts was a pretty old-fashioned one, harking back to the distant past when they had hidden themselves away in the shadows rather than walking around in public society–and broad daylight–under the steady protection of the Martian domes.

Still, in some respects the Kanagawas were a pretty traditional family, which was why they had dug out a basement in the moon they lived on, filled it up with  large sarcophagi and statues of angels, and scattered petrified bones around any corner that couldn't quite fit one of either.

Then again, Juno thought as they descended the stairs. Most traditional vampires weren't quite this  _ tacky _ .

The still eyes of a carved stone cherub stared back at him as he looked around the entrance chamber to the place. A closer look revealed a camera implanted in one of its eyes, which was only slightly less offputting than the stream of red liquid that burbled, thick and endless, out of the jug it balanced on a shoulder.

'Well,' Glass said next to him, also eyeing up the fountain. 'That certainly is some decor. It must be expensive to keep that fountain running all the time, I imagine the smell must get terrible if it's not cleaned out regularly.'

'Yeah, I'm choosing to believe that's not real blood,' Juno replied, tearing his eyes away from the wretched thing and looking over at the door into the winding catacombs that formed the rest of the basement instead.

'Mm, we can all choose to believe whatever we want, detective,' Glass said. 'That doesn't change the fact of what it is.' He held his hands up when Juno shot him a look. 'You don't get to be a galaxy-renowned vampire expert without learning to recognise blood on sight, you know.'

'Yeah, great, thanks for that. Just what I wanted to have confirmed, now if you don't mind, for the sake of my stomach and both of our sensibilities I'm gonna go on pretending that it's just coloured water that Cecil put in there to psych people. You coming with?' he nodded towards the door.

‘Of course, I wouldn’t miss it.’

The door led through to a corridor, its ceiling less vaunted than that of the entrance chamber they came in through. It was, helpfully, unlit, so Juno cursed and pulled a torch out of his pockets. The thin beam illuminated the cut stone walls with less power than Juno would have liked, but it meant that he could at least see where he was going after the door closed behind them with an ominous thud behind them.

He glanced over to Glass, who was still wearing the sunglasses despite the extremely noticeable lack of sun in the area. He looked back to Juno, the low light obscuring his expression, and tilted his head.

'Shall we?' he asked.

'Sure.'

They walked through the stone corridor for a while, their footfalls loud and echoing. When they came to a branch in the path, Glass threw him a wide grin and put an arm on his shoulder to steer him towards the right, saying 'This way, detective.' After that Glass took the lead, Juno a little behind him and holding the torch out to his side to get the beam to illuminate what was coming up ahead of them.  

Juno noticed the markings at the same time as Glass stopped and stood up straight, causing Juno to barrel into him. They would possibly both have fallen, were it not for Glass suddenly catching him with arms that contained more force than their slimness would have suggested. 

'The hell is that?' Juno asked, already having some idea what the ominously red pattern smeared on the floor right in front of them might suggest.

'Blood runes!' Peter said, crouching down to take a closer look. To Juno's mild horror, he reached out and touched the rune, then licked his finger. 'Fascinating, really, it looks to be some kind of summoning sigil -'

As Glass spoke, Juno became very aware of a sound off to their sides, a sort of rustling, skittering noise that made the made of his neck prickle. He whirled around, shining the torch on the walls and ceilings around them, but only catching the ends of shadows that hurried out of the way of the beam before he could identify them.

'Hey, Glass, I think we might have company,' he said, listening to the sounds grow louder but still unable to fix an eye on their opponents. A sudden movement to his left meant that he ducked instinctively, but whatever the thing was still caught him briefly on the side of the head. 'Imminent company of the sort that’s not really inclined on stopping for a chat and I really think we should get going.' 

He started moving before he’d finished speaking, grabbing the other man by the arm and yanking him to his feet.

'Oh yes, maybe we - Juno!' Juno turned back to him, looking questioning as an unearthly red light suddenly lit them from beneath. He looked round to see that he was stood right in the centre of a network of detailed lines painted out in blood, the light spreading along the lines out from the centre where he stood.

He looked at Glass.

'Is that bad?' 

Glass grimaced, then shrugged. ‘That’s really a matter of–no on second thoughts I think running might be the better option than talking here.’

Grabbing the hand that still held his arm, Glass took off, dragging Juno with him.

If there was one positive thing to have come out of the creepy death sigils, at least Juno could see now. In particular, he could see the horrifying contraptions that were now surrounding them, made apparently partly out of shadow but mostly out of shimmering metal, and sharp edges and - of course - camera lenses. 

Rather than inspecting the things, he decided to focus on running away from them. As they swarmed up and around him, he spotted a door in the nearby wall, and veered around to aim for that. Glass appeared to have the same thought: he put on a burst of speed, making a beeline for the door.

Unfortunately, Glass was both significantly faster than Juno, and still holding onto him, which meant that rather than just falling behind Juno tripped over his own two feet. The mass of creatures crawled over each other  and along his legs as he tried to pull himself free. Glass skidded to a halt and reached down to try and pull him free but it didn’t do much more than Juno’s own attempts to kick the creatures off. 

Juno changed tack. Kicking wasn’t working, so he shook Glass off him and pulled out his gun. The things were close to him, swarming all over his legs in a mass that made it hard to tell where they ended and his own body began. Juno squinted, but it didn’t help, so he just pulled the trigger and hoped. He wasn’t even sure what the thing was set to - probably stun, and who even knew how much that would do against these things.

Enough to get them to skitter back for a few seconds, it turned out was the answer, Glass pulled him to his feet and the two of them sprinted towards the door, slamming it shut behind them as the creatures hurried forwards. Juno collapsed to the floor, drawing in lungfuls of the stale air as he tried to regain his breath. The air was horrible, the scent of rotting meat hanging heavy enough that even when Juno could more or less breathe normally again, he chose to continue breathing through his mouth. 

Juno tried to look around at their surroundings, but couldn't see anything but the vaguest shapes, his torch dropped on the ground in the middle of fending the things off. They were in a large room, he could tell that from the slight breeze that brushed through through despite it being sealed. Beyond that, he had no clue.

'Well,’ Glass said from somewhere to his right. 'This large and deserted chamber doesn't seem suspicious to me at all.’ 

The was a loud clunk, followed by several more noises as beams of light flared on, illuminating the chamber in which they were stood. They were standing on a narrow walkway, with a lake of red liquid running down either side. From the smell, Juno had both a strong suspicion that it was  _ not _ coloured water and a strong urge to throw up, but he managed to maintain a hold on his control and didn't. at the end of the walkway was what looked like a sacrificial altar of some sort, raised up on dais with intricate channels cut into the sides. 

'Had to go and say something, didn't you?’ Juno replied, guard up and looking around. The monsters that had surrounded them in the previous room were all around this one too, clinging to the walls and the hideous sculptures that rose up out of the crimson lake on either side. 

‘If it helps, I do believe that this would have happened regardless of whether or not I said anything,’ Glass replied, as a rhythmic mechanical noise began to emanate from the dais. A figure rose up from it, standing at the top in a pose that looked practiced, designed for the cameras to catch on. 

Cecil Kanagawa smiled a bright, toothy smile out at an invisible audience as cameras on skittery metal supports came swarming up to capture him from every angle. 

‘Welcome back viewers, and we’ve got a real treat for you tonight! The thrilling debut of our hot new series:  _ Bleed Out! _ Hosted by me, Cecil Kanagawa!’ 

A secondary array of lights came on with another clunk that was almost certainly purely for dramatic effect. Cecil grinned at the camera, several lifetimes' worth of experience and a bucketload of narcissism meaning that the angle - from what Juno could make out of the camera positioning down at the other end of the catwalk - was perfect.

'The rules of the game are quite simple, audience. We've got two hapless souls here in the Chamber of Sacrifice– everybody give them a big hand!'

A couple of belegged creatures with cameras for heads swooped down to peer over at them. Juno swore and looked away, not that it was going to do that much good with the number of things looking at them, and Rex made to hid his face immediately, looking determinedly down and away from the cameras. Which meant that his face was more or less pressed into Juno's jacket, but Juno had bigger concerns than trying to think about that.

'Aw, looks like they're a little camera shy. Well, we can't be having that, but no worries, the blood pumping, high kicking action of Bleed Out will have our delicate flowers loving the limelight in no time. The rules of the game are quite simple, viewers. Our two competitors are locked in the room with only one door - well, unless you count the door they came in through, but on the other side of that one is a whole horde of ravenous campires - that’s camera vampires for all you at home - just waiting to take a bit out of those lovely necks - or arms, or anywhere really! They're clever, not fussy!'

As if in cue, there was a thud against the door behind them, followed by a series of scratching noises. Message pretty obvious: even if you can somehow get the door - which looked both solid and extremely locked - open, going this way is a bad idea.

'The other door is sealed by ancient magic, uncovered by my dear father and further refined by me. But unsealing it is terribly simple. All our competitors have to do is find the right runic pattern somewhere in the room and paint it on the door. Of course, they'll need to paint it all in blood. A lot of blood - I guess one of our competitors is going to have to be terribly generous with their ichor, because the stuff in that lake's not going to do much more than look fabulous. Who do you think it'll be folks, our old friend the tragic - some might say pathetic - Detective Juno Steel, or his mysterious friend, an agent from out of town, Rex Glass? We know the detective can be terribly self-sacrificing, but I think our new friend might just surprise us. Let's see!'

With that, there was another clunk and whatever platform had lifted Cecil up retracted down beneath the altar, taking him out of their sight.

'What the goddamned actual fuck, Cecil?' Juno shouted after him. 'You think this is going to help your case in court at all? They don't normally like it when you try to murder the people investigating you!'

Actually that was a lie. Generally speaking, if you were rich enough the courts didn't actually care about what you did to the people investigating you, but Juno had to hold onto at least some pretence that they did or it made his job a lot - well, a bit - more dangerous.

'Ah, Juno,' Rex said next to him. Juno glanced over at him - he was looking towards the edges of the room, where the packs of creatures - campires, Cecil had said? Juno had to admire the pun if nothing else - were slowly advancing from their positions up on the walls. 'I think we might have a couple more significant issues on our hands.'

'Oh!' Cecil's voice rang out from everywhere at once. Juno squinted around and, even in the dim light, was able to spot a couple of the speakers planted around the room. 'Did I forget to mention? Our little friends over here want that blood almost as much as you do. Better watch out, competitors - they're quick!'

As Cecil finished speaking, one of the creatures clinging to the ceiling above Juno and Rex's heads let go, its many limbs skittering as it fell. Acting mostly on impulse, Juno shot it, interrupting its trajectory to that it landed near their feet rather than on top of them and Glass was able to stamp on the thing. A lot.

'The door, perhaps?' Glass asked. 'I doubt it's going to be a viable solution but we may as well look.'

Juno nodded, then ran.

The campires launched after them in a wave. Cecil's voice rang out from the speakers again - 'Looks like they're working together for the time being - that's sweet, I know some of you were hoping for immediate bloodshed but it's so much more exciting if they start out on a team.' Juno tried to ignore it as best he could, an exercise that was helped by the chittering, clicking clacking movements of the campires. There were too many of them to be effectively dealt with, so Juno made do with just shooting the ones that got closest. They got back up after a few seconds, their jerky, wonky movements made even more so by the damage, but it did at least seem to slow them down. A bit.

He and Glass all but crashed into the door. Juno righted himself, looking back around, ready to fend off the creatures. 'You gonna look at this?'

'Of course!' Glass said, something of the wonder he'd displayed earlier at the Light of Mars clear in his voice. 'It's quite an ingenious use of technology really, the combination of modern technology, with ancient magics is incredibly innovative...'

So now Juno had two sets of irritating commentary to tune out, and no notable improvement on the 'horrible mechanical monsters chasing us' situation. He focused and variously shooting and kicking the things, attempting to maintain at least some kind of a perimeter to allow Glass to do whatever the fuck he was doing with the doorway. Unlike normal animals, which would probably get the message after the twelfth injury or so, these things just kept on coming.

'Sounds real fascinating,' Juno said eventually, cutting Glass off midstream. 'You got any clues on how to open it without one of us dying because, tempting though that idea often is I got a job to complete.'

'You know, I can't tell if you're threatening me or displaying a worrying lack of regard for your own mortality but either way, no, I'm afraid there doesn't appear to be anything we can do about this door over here. It's solid rock so I'm not going the be able to break through, I'd guess that the only way to get it open is some kind of mechanised pulley system - one which needs rather a lot of blood to activate.'

'Great, so what you're saying is there's nothing to be done over here?'

'Well, I suppose you could take it like that.'

'Great!'

Not stopping to see if Glass was following him, Juno took off in the direction of the altar that Cecil had risen up out of, hoping that it might  _ possibly  _ be  _ slightly  _ easier to open the exit that wasn't specifically designed to be impossible to open without a hefty blood donation.

Kicking another creature out of the way, Juno hefted himself up onto the top of the altar thing. It was also made of stone, carved in runes like the ones which decorated the walls of the chamber. The stone was mostly smooth blocks, the design fit together neatly to obfuscate the seam that Juno knew had to be there, unless Cecil had found some way to turn stone into water and make it meld together and part at a whim. Which, to be fair, Juno did thing that there were technologies that could melt rock at a whim, but at least as far as he knew those technologies weren't usually all that portable.

He leant in to run his finger over the design, trying to find the gap in the rocks by touch if he couldn't by sight, but a sudden starburst in front of his eyes distracted him, as something hit him in the back of his head. His forehead collided with the rough stone of the altar, bruising there as well. He tried to sit up again but something had latched on to the back of his head - at least for a few moments, before the weight was lifted and there was a hideous mechanical screech.

Juno sat up again. His vision was still hazy, but he could just about make out the shape of Rex Glass standing above him.

'Try not to die before you've solved the puzzle, detective,' Glass said. Juno smiled, which made him wince as the gesture somehow managed to pull the muscles in his forehead. He didn't like to think about what kind of bruise it would leave - or scab, given that there was a smudge of blood on the altar. It felt quite ironic, that he'd offer up the tupid sacrifice or whatever that was apparently being called for by bashing his stupid head on the thing.

'Cover me then,' he snapped at Glass, turning back to try and inspect the altar.

'Already on it, Juno, already on it,' Glass replied, punctuating the sentence with a swift kick to one of the creatures that had skittered too close. Juno went back to kneeling, tracing his fingers along the stone until they ran over what seemed like an innocuous bump that, on closer inspection, was actually a fissure where the two bits of stone didn't quite line up.

'Hey, Glass?' Juno shouted, unwilling to take his eyes off the chink lest it get lost in the swirling patterns again. 'Don't suppose you've got something I could use to get leverage on this thing?'

'Leverage, oh, yes, that sounds about right, but you'll notice that my hands are rather full here -'

Muttering under his breath, Juno stuck a fingernail in the gap to keep track of it and looked up at Glass. His hands were indeed rather full of horrifying bits of creature, one of which he currently appeared to be using as a weapon against another, using its hard, inert shell to bash another one away.

'But I think there's a multitool with a crowbar attachment in my back pocket, you could probably fish it out and use that.'

Not exactly what Juno had been planning on doing, but given that Glass's arms really were incredibly full, it didn't seem like he was going to have that much of a choice. He reached around and into the agent's back pocket, which went down significantly deeper than Juno had been expecting and was full of more things that he'd really been anticipating too.

It also brought him very close to Glass's arse, which Juno wasn't exactly going to complain about, even if it did feel a little creepy. Especially because, despite all the movement and exercise, Glass did not seem to be sweaty, or even all that warm.

He managed to wrap his hands around what felt like a multitool and pulled it out, along with a whole pile of bits of paper. At least one of them looked like a receipt, but others were covered in writing, and scribbles that looked like patterns - rather than putting them back,or letting them float off to be eaten by one of the campires, Juno shoved them into his own pockets and went back to squinting until he found the gap between the two pieces of stone again and shoved the crowbar extension of the tool down in between them.

It wasn't exactly easy going - the tool was small enough that it didn't provide a huge amount of leverage - but he managed to get the rock faces to budge just a little bit. Jamming in the folded up receipt he wedged the thing open, before twisting the crowbar. There was a grinding noise, and a gap of about an inch opened up.

Juno squinted down into the space between the stone. There was some kind of light below, helpfully illuminating the structure in a thin blue light. There were supports, and a thick twist of steel cable that looked to be holding the thing up. Juno smiled. He had a plasma cutter in his own jacket of course, but the tool probably had some kind of attachment that he could just get in...

The cutter flared to life with a warm buzzing sound at the same time as Cecil appeared to realise what he was doing and shouted for guards to stop them. Not that he could do much - no sooner had Cecil finished his sentence than Juno cut through the first of the support wires. The resulting displacement revealed another one on the same side, and Juno cut through that, destabilising the platform enough that he, Glass and a pile of campires came crashing down into what looked like some kind of control room.

The first focal point of the room, the thing that Juno's eyes honed in on as soon as they crashed down through the roof, was Cecil. As any rational person would, Juno went over and punched him. There was a faint twinge at the side of his neck, in the spot where Cecil had bitten him once, but he ignored it.

'What the hell was that?' Juno asked, attempting to punch him again.

'Ow, ow, Juno! Stop that!'

Cecil had the advantage of being both quicker and stronger than Juno, which meant he was able to dodge the second punch. It didn't stop Juno from trying to land another one though.

'It's just a show Juno, a really good new show that was going to get the greatest ratings since  _ Blood or Dead  _ series three - whatever way you played it really, I knew that whoever won we could make it look like an  _ absolute  _ tragedy, the fans love that sort of thing, and you’d be stars.'

He kept dodging out of the way, dancing around the hole in the ceiling left by the collapsed in slab of stone. No more of the campires followed them in, instead peering over the gap as though curious to see what was going on.

Suddenly, Cecil was no longer moving. Apparently he hadn't taken Glass into account, an oversight which meant that Glass had been able to sneak up and get him in some kind of hold. In the semi-darkness, Glass’s eyes reflected the coloured lights strangely, turning the blue light into a strange, shimmery green.

Rather than thinking about Glass’s eyes some more, Juno punched Cecil again.

'Ow! If you're going to hit me, at least do it where the cameras can see rather than in this dingy dark little corner over here.'

Cecil nodded in the direction of one of the cameras that stood on the corner of the room. This one, thankfully, appeared to be inert. Juno shot it. There was a beep from Cecil's arm - the mechanical one - and some red text scrolled across one of the darkened screens. Juno shot that as well, for good measure. It dropped immediately, limp and lifeless next to Cecil’s body.

'Cut the crap, Cecil, your dad's dead and you did it and we don't need your stupid distractions.'

'My dad is what?'

‘Look, drop the pretences, you’re pretty much the only viable suspect at this point, your sister’s guaranteed that she’s telling the truth so unless you can come up with a  _ very _ convincing explanation of where you were last night it would be great if you’d shut up and just. Admit it.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Juno, I spent last night working on a new set of mechanical control runes for the Kindred fellowship and I lost track of the time a bit but I couldn’t have… I wouldn’t have…’ Cecil’s eyes didn’t exactly well up with tears, but he looked as though they were going to and he let out a sob. ‘I couldn’t kill my daddy, my papa, my dear old-’

‘Okay, whatever,’ Juno cut him across. The tears looked real enough but given that Cecil turned the mildest inconvenience into a theatrical performance worthy of the space oscars that didn’t mean much. ‘Who are the Kindred Fellowship?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Junebug! It’s  _ vampire secrets _ , and you are so terribly, terribly mortal.’ 

‘Bullshit, you’re being interrogated on suspicion of murder here. You don’t get to tell me it’s “vampire secrets”.’

'Well, you know if you just let me enthrall you you could be in on those secrets.' Cecil’s tone switched over to one of cajoling, as those Juno were being unreasonable. 'You know it doesn't even hurt, most people like it when they get bitten.'

That part, unfortunately, was not something Juno could deny, but fortunately there was everything else that Cecil has said.

'Yeah, no thanks. The amount desire I have to be your brainwashed stooge is way in the negatives, even lower than the last time you asked given the amount of time you've just spent trying to kill me.'

Cecil opened his mouth - whether to argue or pout Juno didn't yet know, but in doing so his shifted in Glass’s grip. His shirt - already more of a sculptural piece than a practical outfit - slipped to reveal more of his arm. Glass struck out and grabbed it, quick as a viper.

'Hold on Juno,' Glass said. 'I think this might be rather relevant to our investigations.'

He nodded to the edge of Cecil's shirt. Underneath it was a series of marks, picked out in what looked like dark red glass, that resembled the runes that they had been seeing, frankly all over the place. Juno leant in to look closer at them, but the angles were awkward. He looked at Glass, then back at Cecil, and then went over to shove the sleeve up far enough to reveal the rest of the arm.

'If you wanted me to take my clothes off you know you only had to say!' Cecil complained as Juno pulled his arm free and held it up into the light. 'Only, couldn't you at least wait for the reinforcements to arrive, it's been absolutely  _ years  _ since anyone leaked a sex tape of me-'

Juno did his level best to continue to ignore Cecil. Cybernetic arms weren't exactly common fare in Hyperion, but nor were they unheard of: wiring a metal arm into a person's nervous system was a delicate operation, but a doable one. But the channels that Juno could now see had blood flowing through them were something else.

'What the hell are these?' he asked.

'Oh, just a little something that I was working on, it's hard to get the right level of control with a normal arm, you can do so much better when there's something a little more advanced, and a little more sanguine going on.'

'These are soul binding runes, Juno,' Glass said, nodding in the direction of one of the complex clusters of markings. It looked familiar - similar to the designs on the campires that had been pursuing them at various points. 'Really just more examples of the combination of technology and magic that the Kanagawa family are known for, it's likely making the arm act more as if it's alive - fed by fresh blood of course, a vampire couldn't sustain that sort of life force on their own. You can see the similarities to the rune that was painted on the wall of the mausoleum. And look at that one there, that's like the sigil for enthralment but it's expanded slightly, as if to...'  

Glass trailed off, a look of realisation coming across his face, at the same time that Juno felt a sinking feeling within his stomach.

'So what you're saying is that there's ultimately someone else behind all of this.'

'Ah.' Rex shifted slightly, as Cecil - still held in place somehow - wriggled, trying to get free of him. Glass adjusted his grip, frowning at Juno. 'That does appear to be what I'm saying, yes.'

They looked at each other, and then Juno looked at Cecil, who immediately started crying again. There was something weirdly fascinating about watching a vampire cry: no tears came out, so it was just dry, wracking sobs that, in Cecil's case, were interspersed with mutters of 'Daddy...' and 'Father...'

'Well,' Glass said, letting go of Cecil who promptly slumped on the floor, continuing to sob. 'I'm not sure exactly what that would make this case. Manslaughter? A case of coercion?'

Juno shrugged. 'Not sure what the evidence amounts to, it's not like mind control is something that can exactly be proven in a court of law.'

'Oh no, no it generally can't, but I should think that the surrounding evidence all points to it as a conclusion. Besides, you could just ask him about it.'

Point taken, Juno shook Cecil - more gently than he might otherwise have done, but a shaking nonetheless until he looked up at Juno with wide, creepy red eyes.

'You feel like telling us exactly what you were up to last night?' he asked. Cecil let out a long, shaky breath.

'It was all recorded on the arm, before you shot it,' he replied, petulant.

'Yeah, well, we all know that any time you're doing anything important there's half a dozen cameras on you.'

'Well, that is true.' Cecil picked himself up and made his way over to the bank of screens that stood, ominous, over in the corner of the room. 'And I was hoping to put together a broadcast, even if you've just ruined all of my Bleed Out footage -not that it was all that good to begin with, I just wish you would let me make you a star Juno.'

'Not happening, show us the footage already.'

What Cecil showed them didn't exactly look good for him. The footage showed him in what looked vaguely like a cross between a lab and the lair of a mad wizard, working on something in front of a pile of computers and parts of machines, with papers scattered all around. He stood up after a long time, then stumbled to the room where Croesus's dust pile had been found, using a beaker of blood to scrawl a pattern on the wall - the pattern they'd seen earlier. Cecil's face grew more and more solemn as they watched.

'Hold on, that thing you're drawing, what is it?'

Cecil shook his head, snapping out of whatever semi-trance the view had drawn him into.

'That! Oh it's a life rune I think, it's what I found in the journal of -' at that point, Cecil stopped speaking. His mouth kept on moving, but the words ceased to make any sound, and after a moment or two he stopped.

'Secrecy clause,’ Glass said with a detached sort of interest. ‘Tricky to pull off but not impossible. I'm more impressed by the fact that he appears to have no memory of this.'

It was true, Cecil was there shaking his head slightly and muttering 'No, no I was there all night, I fell asleep working on the show notes what's going on with these cameras.'

Juno sighed and looked at the footage again. The cameras were sped up, showing Cecil move with inhuman speed. Cecil finished smearing the room with blood and instead started tracing it on himself, over the mechanical arm, until Croesus came in and started saying something - the camera feeds annoyingly lacking in audio. Glass pressed a button to slow the feed down, so that they were only moving twice, or maybe three times as fast as normal.

The conversation ended when Cecil pointed to the Light. Juno could see what was coming before it happened. Croesus opened the case - it didn't appear to be locked, which surprised Croesus as well - and pulled the thing out. Cecil's arm - the mechanical one - jerked, and he smashed down on the top. Blinding light filled the screen and when it cleared the data looked corrupt, but it was pretty clear to see Cecil slumped unconscious on the ground, looking exceptionally burnt but still intact, and Croesus just a pile of dust.

'I think we're probably done here,' Glass said.

 

~0~

 

When they finally managed to leave the Kanagawa mansion, it was dark and drizzling, the street lights gloomy in the rain. Juno wasn’t really paying attention, letting his instincts guide him in the direction of his office. Most of the next steps were just routine at this point, not requiring much active thought. They’d confiscated the Light of Mars as a murder weapon, so the next steps were go to office, leave it in the safe, send a message to the PI registry to let them know they'd be by in the morning. The kind of routine tasks that meant Juno's mind could wander. 

Most of what was stuck in his head was the scene that they’d left the Kanagawa mansion with. Cecil had been sat on an ornate couch - actually sat, rather than collapsed or lounging - staring with a far-off look in his eyes that Juno himself knew far too well. Juno hadn’t really been aware that Cecil felt emotions other than narcissism and self-pity, and maybe he still didn’t. That kind of expression wasn’t one Juno associated with feeling emotions: it was the kind of expression he associated with feeling nothing at all. 

Min had already gathered a camera crew around them as Juno and Rex both deliberately skirted out, avoiding letting the lights settle on either of their faces. The narrative she was spinning was about the tragedy of youth (nevermind that Cecil was pushing a century, and probably older than Min herself) and the danger of cult activity. From what Juno haad seen, it looked like a real heartwarming bit of tragedy porn that everyone could coo over for a bit before Cecil snapped back to normal and made the next blockbuster gorefest and everyone forgot about it in light of the gratuitous violence now on their screens instead. 

‘Lost in thought, Detective?’ Glass asked. 

Juno started, shook his head with an ‘Mm?’ sound and looked over at him. Glass had a faint smile on his face, but his eyebrows were drawn together, his overall expression one of fond concern. 

Juno shrugged. 

'It's just kind of a big fucking tragedy is all,' he started, intending to leave it at that but once he'd opened his mouth he found he couldn't really stop. 'Cecil might be a narcissistic psychopath but he was obviously set up to do that, and we've not got much, if any idea who the hell's behind it all, and I can't get that whole thought out of my head. You saw the look on Cecil's face, not that he doesn't deserve some kind of, I don't know, karma or something but. Hell.'

'Sounds like a poor night for you to be alone with your thoughts,' Glass said. His tone was light, but there was a definite hint of something else there. Juno looked over at him, squinting through the falling rain. Glass looked concerned, which was touching really, but there was also a faint smile about his lips. 'And I'd hate to wait out here all night in the rain.'

It was definitely a hint. Juno was tempted to feign obliviousness, but it would be a lie. Just like it would be a lie to say that he wasn't interested in following through on the hint, the faint suggestion that rang around the concept of Glass coming back with him.

And the chance to test a theory.

'Yeah, that sounds like it would suck. Fine, come on over, why the hell not.'

He turned to go back to his car. Rex followed, making idle conversation on the way back to Juno's apartment that Juno mostly replied to with agreeing noises, or disagreeing noises, too busy stewing in his own thoughts to actually make conversation.

Rex hesitated at the door. Sensing that he hadn't been followed in, Juno paused in the process of taking off his damp coat and looked back at him. 'You know, if you would rather not have me here I'm happy to go and wait somewhere else,' Rex said, frowning. 'I wouldn't want to impose on your hospitality.'

Juno looked him up and down. Glass was poised on the threshold, suddenly the image of polite reservedness. Juno waved his hand dismissively, turning round to root in the cupboards for glasses and the bottle of semi-decent whisky that he kept for strangers or when feeling particularly sorry for himself.

'No, you're probably right, I could use some company. Come in, there's not much food around but I can offer you a drink or several.' Not waiting for a response, Juno poured out two glasses.

'No, no.' Glass stepped into the room, looking at the surroundings. Juno's flat wasn't exactly tidy, but he couldn't be bothered to feel embarrassed by the state of it. 'I don't really drink alcohol.'

There was a fraction of a second's pause between the words drink and alcohol, just long enough to make Juno feel the weight of the silence, the emphasis that it lent to the word. He downed both of the glasses rather than dwell on it, feeling the cold drink burn down his throat and the haze run up to his head, making his thoughts simultaneously louder and more muted. Whether that was actually the alcohol or just his brain acting in anticipation he didn't know, but the fuzz that was all of his thoughts seemed better that way, so he poured himself another glass.

Rex watched him as he drank it. 

‘You really do take it all to heart, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Look at you, getting angry about things you can’t fix - or things you haven’t fixed yet. You know, most people would simply… wash their hands of this whole affair. You’ll have been paid by now, you can write it off as not your problem.’

'Yeah well, that's a lovely sentiment but you don't live here. If someone's out there trying to kill vampires, they're not the only ones who are going to suffer because as a general rule it's far easier to blame the squishy mortal bloodsacks than their own kind. So we've got the elite dying and everyone else being blamed for it, and so far there are absolutely no leads at all except that Cecil Kanagawa is involved in some kind of cult.'

Juno slammed back the glass in his hand and made to pour another, but the feeling of Glass's cool fingers on his wrist stopped him in the process of reaching over.

'I'm sure you could find something to follow up on,' Glass responded. He was closer than Juno was expecting, and his voice had gone lower.

Juno was drunk enough already that he didn't bother to self censor.

'You know, it's been nice and all but I really can't tell whether you're flirting with me, trying to encourage me or dropping some kind of hint,' he said.

Glass smiled, mouth only a few inches away from Juno's own. 'Why can't it be all three, my dear detective?'

The kiss started off close-mouthed, but Juno opened his mouth against Rex's instinctively, wanting to kiss him harder, wanting to find out how Glass tasted and to see if it was anything like the ridiculous cologne that had been distracting Juno all day. There was a soft noise that sounds like an 'oh!', and Glass pulled him closer, close enough that his body was a solid weight against Juno's front, their legs almost interwoven.

Glass kissed with an intensity Juno wasn't expecting, for all the flirting. He kissed like this was the first time he'd kissed someone properly in years which, hell, maybe it was. It wasn't like Juno knew anything about him.

Then again, he had some suspicions.

He deepened the kiss, pushing his tongue past Glass's lips, tasting his mouth and running his tongue along the top row of his teeth.

Juno had kissed a lot of people in his time. There were some things that stayed fairly consistent about kissing. The warmth, for one, the taste of flesh, of person, of the intense struggle for continued existence. The taste of life.

Rex Glass tasted cold, and sweet, and just a little bit like death. When Juno's tongue caught on the edge of one of his teeth, he tasted like iron.

A couple of things happened simultaneously. Rex gasped sharply, the kiss broke apart and Juno snapped a pair of handcuffs around Rex's wrists. They were ordinary, regulation steel (ha) handcuffs. Not silvered, so they weren’t going to hold Glass for very long - just hopefully long enough for the HCPD to arrive and for Juno to ask a few questions. 

‘Well,’ Rex said, as Juno reached for the comms to call for the HCPD. ‘This is quite a predicament you’ve got me in.’ 

[ _ image description: a three panel comic against a dark brown background. The panels are arranged horizontally, and overlap slightly. The first panel is a close up of the lower half of Rex Glass’s face, and his neck and collar. He is licking a smudge of blood off his lips, which are very red, delicately. His teeth are visible, with one long fang prominently displayed. There is a speech bubble saying ‘Well’. The next panel is an image of Glass’s hands, handcuffed behind his back. The third panel is an image of Rex Glass and Juno Steel facing each other. Glass stands on the left, wearing a pink shirt, dark jacket and dark trousers with a belt. He has mid-pale skin and dark hair with a lock falling over his face. He looks smug despite his hands being visibly cuffed behind his back. Juno stands on the right, shorter than Glass and wearing a brown coat and white t-shirt. He has dark skin and short hair, and his face has a scar down an eyebrow and across his nose. He is holding an electronic communicator device. End description. _ ] (art by @[faunlord](http://faunlord.tumblr.com/))  


There was a tiny smudge of Juno’s blood left on his pale lips. Rex’s tongue flicked out to lick it up. Juno tried not to watch, and focused on telling the incredibly irate call receiver the details of the situation. The police would be five minutes. Juno hoped the cuffs lasted that long though, to be fair, it didn’t look like Glass was planning on snapping his way out of them on strength alone. 

Maybe he hadn’t eaten in a while. Though if that was the case he had incredible self control, the number of times that Juno had been cut over the course of the day, the scent of his blood must have saturated the room. 

‘That was a neat trick,’ he commented. ‘With the tongue. Assuming it was a trick, and not just you getting a little over-excited in the heat of the moment.’ He smiled. The fangs - because yes, they absolutely were fangs, not just strangely prominent canines - more obvious now than before and, despite everything, still sending a tremor of interest down to the pit of Juno’s stomach. ‘Not that I would blame you if you were, of course. But what made you suspect?’ 

It felt like Glass was still flirting with him. And it was working, because if there was one thing Juno couldn’t resist it was the chance to explain exactly how he’d worked the mystery out. 

‘You hesitated at the door,’ he started. He kept his eyes on Glass and his hand - not very subtly - on his blaster. Set to kill: stuns did nothing to vampires but kill tended to at least disable them. It still made Juno edgy, but there wasn’t much other insurance he had. 

‘You’ll put a man in handcuffs for simply being polite?’

‘Only on a bad day. Or if he’s got real pointy teeth and a nonexistent pulse. Gotta admit I was pretty surprised when your blood type showed up as O negative but then I thought to myself, hey, if he’s a thief he’s probably going to have nimble fingers. Nimble fingers and a handy source of human blood that I saw him pull out of the still twitching body of a lovely robot not five minutes previously.’

‘I suppose by this point you’ve got me cornered on vampire, but thief is a new accusation.’ He wasn’t exactly denying it, just smiling, as though delighted by the explanation. ‘How did you figure that one out.’ 

‘Yeah, i admit that one was a little harder to pick up on, sure you’ve got nimble fingers and know your way around the mansion a little too well but really, that wasn’t much more than a hunch from the way you were handling the incredibly rare and expensive artifact. It wasn’t actually confirmed until I realised that you’d pulled the keys to my safe right out of my pocket.’

Not making an effort to be subtle, Juno reached into Glass’s outer pocket. As he expected, the keys were in there - along with more pieces of paper and a necklace that looked far too expensive for any normal person to be carrying around in a coat pocket. He put the necklace back, as that one officially  _ wasn’t _ his problem. 

Glass chuckled. ‘I suppose you’ve got me there.’

Juno sighed, putting the key back in his own pocket. The last part was the part he was least looking forward to. 

‘Then there’s also the fact that whatever cult Cecil’s got himself involved with, you’re almost certainly a part of that too. So are you planning on telling me about the whole murdering people thing or is that just something I’m going to have to figure out for myself over time?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t - no, don’t look at me like that Juno, I’ve already told you about the existence of secrecy enchantments. I very literally can’t tell you what I’m contracted for.’

If he’d been about to say anything else, it was cut off by the sound of people knocking on the door and saying ‘Open up, police!’

The HCPD goons sent over weren’t the people Juno would have chosen - not least because there was an active strain of mutual dislike between them - but they had at least had the presence of mind to bring silvered handcuffs with them. Despite the restraint and the fact that he was very arrested, his last look at Juno was to grin. 

‘Farewell, Juno.’ 

Juno watched the door for a long time after it closed, before sighing and turning to sit down, but something caught his eye - a small piece of paper, wedged between the sofa cushions. He pulled it out. A piece of paper. He unfolded it - there was a sigil of some kind scrawled onto it, not something Juno recognised. It looked old, like it was one of the many piece of paper Glass kept in his pockets, but there was writing on top that was still almost tacky with how recent it had been.

_ Juno,  _

_ I meant what I said. I’m sure you can, and will, find something to follow up on. I’m not so sure that our paths will cross, but somehow I feel they will. _

_ I’d suggest looking out for me, but we both know that you won’t see anything interesting except maybe what I’ve left in my wake. Check the police feeds in the next, oh, three minutes or so if you want confirmation that I’ve got away.  _

_ Signed, _

_ Your better half,  _

_ Peter Nureyev. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished!! Huge thank you to everyone involved with the penumbra minibang for actually. getting my off my ass to write a reasonably long fic, especially the mods and my artists whose art gives me So Much Joy.
> 
> I'm @stormsbreadth on tumblr if any of you want to come say hi there, otherwise, comments here give me Life.


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